KEVIN MCCOMBS: The Metal Producer Work Ethic, Colin Brittain Joining Linkin Park, Running Steakhouse Studio

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. Our guest today is Mr. Kevin McCombs, who is an OG URM student who basically made the dream come true. About five years ago. We watched him become Colin Britt's assistant and intern on a day to remember record in Florida and then very quickly thereafter move his life all the way to LA to keep working with Colin. And since then he's worked alongside Colin with artists such as Papa Roach, three 11, Suco, and just so many more. He's now graduated to become the head engineer at Steakhouse Studio in LA and just the hits keep on coming with Kevin. We are super proud of him and I think that any of you who are URM students who want an example to follow of how to go from, I don't want to say nothing, but how to make the unrealistic, realistic check out Kevin's story here goes well. Kevin, welcome back to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for having me, dude. When was the last time feel like

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):

Three years? 4, 5, 3 or four. I think I had just gotten out to Los Angeles at that point.

Speaker 1 (00:01:20):

Okay,

Speaker 2 (00:01:20):

That's right. Within a year of working out here and

Speaker 1 (00:01:25):

Your life's changed

Speaker 2 (00:01:27):

Tremendously since then. I have lived in Nashville. I moved back to Los Angeles and now I'm posted up.

Speaker 1 (00:01:36):

That's today when we were, you asked me about the storm. I was thinking that that's why I said you're going to get it next.

Speaker 2 (00:01:46):

Right?

Speaker 1 (00:01:47):

I actually didn't get it. I'm not in Atlanta, but I knew that I thought you were in Nashville and it was coming to you.

Speaker 2 (00:01:59):

I still go out there a few times a year. My manager Kelly lives out there and a bunch of other artists that I work with, so I'll be heading there like I early November-ish again, but yet two years ago I moved back.

Speaker 1 (00:02:15):

Okay, got it. So you go back and forth. I do. Between the two basically hubs of music in the United States, I go where I am needed. I don't want to talk too much about this, but just out of curiosity, do you work on the metal at all? Do you have time for it? Interest bandwidth,

Speaker 2 (00:02:43):

So I make time for it because that's

Speaker 1 (00:02:46):

Awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:02:46):

I would travel and die without exercise. That part of myself, so invariably a lot of my friends out here on the production side and also my live touring guys and all that stuff, were all metalheads, some of them URM guys as well, and I invariably everywhere. I invariably find myself getting involved in a few metal projects at any given time. So I'm currently in a black metal project. I still have my Florida death metal band. I just played a show last night with a metal leaning. It's more like hard rock metal sort of evanescent stuff, but heavy with this artist Lexi Laney who I work with and yeah, just because I have so many really talented friends, I just find myself helping out, playing bass, doing production, whatever I can do to stay involved in heavy music.

Speaker 1 (00:03:54):

Good, I'm glad to hear that. I was not expecting otherwise. So one thing I have been noticing is there's metal people everywhere and there's URM people everywhere. I'm starting to notice that now a lot more than before, but I feel like I've started to notice it in the past three or four years that every time I am in a new situation or talking to somebody on some tour somewhere, someone on the crew is a URM member or was at some point. It's pretty crazy at this point.

Speaker 2 (00:04:27):

It is crazy. You guys did that over time.

Speaker 1 (00:04:31):

That's the goal.

Speaker 2 (00:04:32):

Yeah. I don't know that it's reached critical mass yet, but it's not a coincidence that a lot of people that I work with, a lot of people that I meet for the first time either have ties to URM or are high level pop dudes who are deep metalheads. I feel like culturally we have infiltrated the higher echelons of label music and stuff like that where the people behind the curtain all love metal. Yeah, I think it's because five

Speaker 1 (00:05:11):

More years, five more years, it'll be a critical mass.

Speaker 2 (00:05:14):

I think it's because we are used to working so much harder for such little return. I always consider it like dollars per note in metal is as bad as it possibly can be. Dollars

Speaker 1 (00:05:32):

Per kick drum.

Speaker 2 (00:05:33):

Yeah. That means that everyone who's doing it is typically in it for the love of the game, which to me, if you have anyone on your team that is in it for the love of the game, then you're going to have a better time in general.

Speaker 1 (00:05:47):

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right and I don't think that anything is easy to do. Well, certainly not even if you're micing up a singer songwriter in an acoustic, yes, there's less technical challenges than mixing orchestral death metal or black metal, but still you have to be good in order to capture something that sounds good. You have to know how to do that well. Anything you do well at a world-class standard is difficult in my opinion, and that means whether you get the gig playing fourth guitar or something for Green Day or something or you're producing pop or whatever, it's all difficult to do at that level. It's all difficult. But that said, the difficulty level for getting metal to sound good is outrageous because nothing about it should sound good. I mean, the way metal sounds when you go to a rehearsal space for a band that's plugged into amps or some local show, that is basically what metal should sound like. Yeah. The way that it sounds on these records we're involved with is not what it should sound like. It's a miracle. And so I think people who have come up, they've been forged in the fire of trying to do that. It's not that other genres are easier, it's more that the challenges are not something that will scare people away.

Speaker 2 (00:07:24):

Yeah, I agree on all counts, especially with the first bit that how difficult it is to do anything at the top level, especially when if the assignment is to record a vocal and an acoustic guitar and the expectation is that you have to be competitive with all other popular music at the same time. It's not subtle how much better some people can be at that. Getting to see engineers and producers do what they do at that level is so humbling that oh geez, it'll make you appreciate the fundamentals and microphone placement or just microphone decision. Yeah, we're using ribbons on overheads to get it closer to this particular set of records that we're working on.

(00:08:26):

The depth of the knowledge base for other genres does go as deep or sometimes deeper because we have staples in metal that get used all the time, but in these other genres, things are kind of blown wide open and anything can be anything and especially in pop music, everything is fair game, so you have to be able to call upon a reference or recreate anything at any given time. It's just a different set of difficulties. Whereas I agree with you what a local band sounds like when they play is that's kind of what metal is when you strip things back. It really just comes down to how well you can play. And these days there's modern metal production. I mean it's closer to dance music than it's a band

Speaker 1 (00:09:24):

Some time. Even if so, the amount of noise involved.

Speaker 2 (00:09:27):

Oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:09:28):

The physics of it all don't, it doesn't mix itself. Certainly not. Hey everybody, I want to take a quick break from this episode to talk to you about URM Academy now. So if you're new here, URM Academy is the best online school for metal and rock producers and musicians. When you join, you get a whole access to a range of content. There's nail the mix, which I'm guessing most of, and that's where we bring on a different artist and a different mixer every month to walk through a mix and give you the raw multi-tracks. And we've had on mixers like Will Putney, ands Borin, Tom Lord Algae with artists, bring Me the Horizon, Shuga, periphery, opec, even Nickelback and tons more. If it's under the heavy music umbrella as I like to call it, we cover it. You also get our Mix lab tutorials, which are little bite size tutorials about very specific topics.

(00:10:31):

We have over a hundred of those now. So if you don't have the time for a nail to mix session or an entire course, you just want to find one tidbit of info to help solve a problem. That's what Mix Labs are for. We also have exclusive members, only Facebook and Discord groups where you can make friends with and talk to thousands of people from all over the world who do the exact same thing as you. And what's super awesome about our community is that it's troll free. We kick trolls out. It's like an Oasis online and also our instructors are part of the community and they interact with everybody. So you can not only make friends, but you can I guess socialize and learn from the best. Also, we have URM enhanced, which is our more advanced membership tier. The main focus of that is our Fast Track library, which are some very, very, very detailed courses on everything from editing drums to post-production effects, automation, creating impulse responses, working with low tune guitars and more. We have over 70 of these. It's actually insane how deep and comprehensive the fast tracks are. And when you join Nail the Mix or URM enhanced, you also get access to Riff Hard. Our online school for metal guitarists with hundreds of lessons from artists such as Animals as Leaders, spirit Box, arc Spire, Jason Richardson, and many more. So go to URM Academy. Let's get back into this episode.

Speaker 2 (00:12:01):

The kind of irony in my own career is that that's the tradition that I was brought up in, but I actually don't think that I'm that sick at mixing death metal. I think that's tremendously difficult and tremendously specialized. You have to be in the minutiae of blends of kick drum samples and snares and stuff like that. And I feel like you have to constantly live in that world to be able to service it properly, which is why the people who are best at it, typically that's all they do. They wake up and they edit blast beats, they wake up and they track screams and they're constantly finding one or 2% to make it more brutal and more extreme and stuff like that. And I have always really admired that in spite of the fact that my path has taken me a different general direction. Getting something like just a four piece band to sound that ridiculously heavy. It's like a magic trick.

Speaker 1 (00:13:16):

It is really like a magic trick. I have two thoughts. One is, so I did an episode with Otero last night and I consider him and when you're at his level of ability, it's no longer is somebody better or worse, it's more like do you prefer somebody's work or not? He's gone to that level for extreme music and he doesn't just do extreme music, but that is what he's best known for. But the thing about him is he goes to shows. I always see him posting that he's at some show, he's always showing me new bands. He is in that lifestyle. Exactly what you said, it's not that he wakes up at its blast beats, but it's his life still. He's just as passionate about it as he always was.

Speaker 2 (00:14:13):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:14:16):

You got to be there. I think

Speaker 2 (00:14:17):

It shows too, when I listen to an Otero record, I'm just like, I wouldn't even know where to begin recording

Speaker 1 (00:14:28):

A band. Is that last Zenith passage? Dude, come on

Speaker 2 (00:14:31):

That or the arch fire stuff because nothing else sounds like that. Dudes like Otero are defining things for themselves and then mastering 'em. That's a

Speaker 1 (00:14:43):

Good way to put

Speaker 2 (00:14:44):

It. Dealing with BPMs that high or vocals that fast, I don't even know what you pull up to reference maybe origin, but maybe actually the new stuff that's coming out, I feel like it's pushing boundaries of what's possible and yet his work, it still sounds like a band, which to me is insane.

Speaker 1 (00:15:09):

Yeah, it's phenomenal. My other thought about what you were saying was, so you were talking about how in other genres when you're sitting there with these other engineers that are just God tier and watching them work as so humbling and I think of it a lot when you're around a virtuoso and just them picking up a guitar and playing a chord already that they're better than everybody.

(00:15:40):

Jason Richardson picks up a guitar next to you and plays a chord. Something about the way he plays that chord gives you all the information you need about, he doesn't need to do his Jason Richardson shit, just the way he played the one chord. You already kind of know what the deal is. And so with those engineers that are kind of on that level and a lot of them are in Nashville, what's interesting about their knowledge and their decisions, because when I've been around them lots of times they'll do a thing where it's what I know, they'll choose a microphone because of characteristics I know that microphone has and they'll place it in a way that I know that you are supposed to do it, but it's not textbook the way they're doing it. It's more like masterful. The textbooks are written because these guys do it this way. They're not doing it this way because it was written in a textbook. And it's hard to explain because there's lots of moves they make that are like, yeah, of course you'll use that mic right there that it's like the perfect choice, but they keep making perfect choices, perfect choice after perfect choice, after the perfect choice, after perfect choice, just masterfully it is kind of nuts. And then of course they'll throw stuff at you that you've never heard of before

(00:17:08):

And you'll see magic tricks, but the meat and potatoes of it, like the 85% of it is them making decisions that textbooks have been written about that anyone who's studied engineering these things, they just know them on an instinctive level almost. Right?

Speaker 2 (00:17:30):

Yeah. I always think of the, I dunno, Steve Albini rest in peace, but people who are so obsessive about impedance relationships of every piece of gear in their studio to the degree that he would modify his microphones to play nice with his preamps and vice versa. It's that kind of attention to detail and just chasing after it could be 2% of the sound, but if everything that he does is 2% better, the eventual outcome is 100% better because they have a way of making records with perfect decisions that compound.

(00:18:16):

It's also not a coincidence that people who are capable of that are capable of working with artists who are doing the same thing on their end, pushing themselves vocally to get ridiculous emotional takes that are going to capture a listener and all of those things. Certainly not to place over importance on the engineering side of things. There are plenty of straight up awful recordings that just really hit people because the performance is so good, but when you have both of those things are satisfied, it's just as good as it can get. One of my favorite quotes was Bruce Swine, who was Quincy Jones and consequently Michael Jackson's engineer, he said something akin to work with the best people you can in the best room that you can with the best equipment that you can and you will be successful. And something I love about that quote is that it specifies that you can, it's just whatever's within your means. If you make sure that those three things, more importantly in that order are satisfied to the best of your ability, then you're going to have the most successful outcome and it's people first. If you're working with Jason Richardson to strum a chord, everything else downstream from that, it matters, but not as much as not having Jason Richardson play the chord.

Speaker 1 (00:20:01):

That's very, very, very true. The idea of making the most out of what the scenario is is crucial. I think that's my biggest takeaway from the best you can is that you can't control every scenario. You can't control every variable of every scenario, but how many times have you known somebody, and I've seen it lots of times where a situation is less than ideal. They have big hopes for something, but the situation they have in which to make that thing happen is less than ideal and they pull it off. Or other cases where they let the fact that the scenario is less than ideal get to their head and then they don't pull it off. I've seen both happen lots of times. So I've seen it enough times where someone has the worst possible circumstance you can imagine for something, and yet they make the best of the entire situation every possible thing they can affect, they do and they make the best of it and things turn out okay, seen the exact opposite where it gets to their heads and then they kind of just take this defeatist attitude and then things don't work out.

(00:21:32):

I've seen it so often. It's ridiculous. I would almost say it's like a law of the universe, but it's definitely not a law of the universe, but it feels like one of those parts of the human condition that if you get into the mindset of I'm going to make the best of this and literally optimize every single possible thing you can optimize your chances for that thing doing well just shot up by a lot. That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (00:22:09):

And consistently, all of the most successful artists that I've have ever worked with, and there's a predominant sense that they would be making music no matter what they had,

(00:22:26):

Especially the young ones, like kids are getting signed to major label deals just from the stuff that they were messing around in Garage Band or FL Studio or whatever they have because no one ever told them to be upset about their microphone and no one ever told them that they needed a 10 73. Obviously if they're that talented, they'll eventually work with people who will make sure that that's taken care of for 'em and the sonics can get better. But frequently, I mean we're all so spoiled now that the basic tools that, especially for making a metal demo, metal demos now sound like leagues ahead of 2005 metal core better than masters coming out with mostly mid instruments that you can just tap into your computer on an airplane.

(00:23:30):

It's an unfair advantage, and I just think about the fact that a lot of people in the generations before they were like, oh yeah, I made my entire record on a Fostex four track constantly just bouncing back down to two tracks until I was done. You're right. The people who just have an obsessive need to create, who won't allow themselves to get hung up on the fidelity of things or whether or not they still have to know that what they're doing is good, but the means of capture can't be the reason why you don't cut a vocal.

Speaker 1 (00:24:14):

No. Or you are working with a band and three of the members suck. One of them doesn't, two of them, and those members that suck, you have the skills that they don't. So you can either take that as a reason to get really mad, which we've seen or personally felt, or you could just take it upon yourself to fix whatever you need to fix, do whatever you need to do to make that thing work.

Speaker 2 (00:24:50):

Sometimes they can be fixing weak links, swap 'em out, or sometimes you just drive forward relentlessly knowing that no one's going to help you.

Speaker 1 (00:25:02):

That's actually been my attitude for a lot of things in life

(00:25:05):

Is I've had this, I don't remember when I got this in my head. I think it was sometime on tour when we were in a van in van days sitting in the very back in kind of the luggage area and just in the middle of nowhere, really middle of nowhere, like a hundred miles to a gas station kind of thing. You break down here and you're fucked kind of place maybe in the desert or maybe it was in the winter in the middle of the wilderness kind of thing and just thinking, no one's going to come help us. And I just thought it through. I thought I really let myself think through, well, what are we going to do? Because literally no one will come help us. No one can come help us. Maybe it was in Canada or something.

(00:26:00):

The thoughts of if we go off the road here, there's no one we can call. No one might drive by. There's literally no one who's going to come help us, and I got this. No one's going to help you idea in my head, basically from that point forward, and it's never really left, and I kind of think about it all the time, it's just, it's on you. I basically tell myself that all the time or people I'm working with, it's on us. There is nobody else. Yeah, there is nobody else. No one's going to do this for us. There is nobody else to do it. It sucks, but it sucks or it doesn't suck, but it's on us. There is nobody else. And that's actually been a really positive thing for me is to not think that anybody else is going to solve the problem.

Speaker 2 (00:26:49):

Definitely. And I can relate that heavily, especially the ironic thing is if you take that attitude and just consistently execute, feeling that way and knowing that you're the master of your own destiny and that kind of stuff, I find that people help me because I have gotten a certain distance. They're like, oh, if I put my time and emotional energy into assisting this person with whatever they're doing, it will come back to me because they work so hard that it is just going to work out. But operating under the pretense that no one is coming to help you means that when you do get help, it rules.

Speaker 3 (00:27:39):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:27:40):

Yeah, that is definitely the case. I mean, I have never been on a van tour myself, but the thing that it made me think of is shortly after moving to Los Angeles, I was sleeping upstairs on Collin's couch at the steakhouse, and dude, I got food poisoning really, really bad from some tainted papoosas or something like that, and I didn't have anywhere to go because the studio is being used during the day. So I'm just sitting out there in the street going, man, this might be the end. Literally.

Speaker 3 (00:28:22):

That sucks.

Speaker 2 (00:28:22):

Yeah. Literally no one can fucking help me right now. I can tuck my tail, turn around and go back to Florida and say, LA kicked my ass and I had a good run, or I can just try and power through this and then treat this as a metaphor for the next few years that I'm going to endure. And yeah, it sucks when no one can help and you're at a rock bottom that you weren't even responsible for

Speaker 1 (00:28:56):

And who will help you. I know exactly what you're talking about because you had nowhere to go, right? You had nowhere because your bed, you couldn't even go be sick in bed.

Speaker 2 (00:29:06):

Correct.

Speaker 1 (00:29:06):

Because your bed was So when I had the house in Florida, and it was the studio part, I had my living quarters, but you go through a door and you're in the drum room and there was no heavy doors or soundproofing. It was literally a thin wooden door with glass. So it was like you were in there with the drums. And I remember there were times, the first time that I got really sick was the same time that one of the people that I worked with in Florida had one of those 10 day long drum sessions, and those drum sessions happened at my house, and then those bands stayed at my house. So yeah, I remember being sick and being, where do I go? What do I do? None of these people are going to help me. I can't ask them for anything. I can't lay here and be sick. This sucks.

Speaker 2 (00:30:10):

This

Speaker 1 (00:30:11):

Fucking sucks. It's a very kind of disconcerting feeling that you kind of don't have any, what's the word? Anger point or home base even your home base is not a true home base, but I feel like it's a great feeling not in the moment, but in terms of your overall timeline and turning points and the types of things that lead people to do work or to do really good work or to get motivated or to want to change their situation for the better. It's stuff like that where that is a shitty situation. I realize people listening, there might be shittier situations on earth for sure, but none of those matter. When you're in a situation like this where you're sick to your stomach and you have to sit in the street because you literally have nowhere to go and you're brand new in town and you don't know anybody, and the people you do know aren't exactly the types of people they're going to know how to help you with and they're busy. They're busy. Exactly. That's a great thing to go through though. I know it sucks, but

Speaker 2 (00:31:27):

No, I agree. That's

Speaker 1 (00:31:28):

A great thing to go through. You didn't choose to go back to Florida?

Speaker 2 (00:31:34):

No, I could have very easily. And you're right. I agree that the feeling of overcoming a period where you're completely untethered and then coming out the other side of that with perhaps the strongest relationships I've ever had in my life is a tremendous feeling like success in spite of adversity is way, way gnarlier of a wave to catch than having things go well all the time. I don't know that that really happens to anyone, especially

Speaker 1 (00:32:12):

Was going to say,

Speaker 2 (00:32:12):

Especially in this industry.

Speaker 1 (00:32:14):

I think that that's kind of a fantasy.

Speaker 2 (00:32:16):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:32:17):

I mean, I'm sure you've met people here and there who just kind of won the sperm bank lottery, just were born to the perfect family, and then they have the perfect looks and they win at everything. They get picked for everything, and it's just the way it is. That is how it is for them. But they are so rare. Yes, they are. They such an anomaly. They're like a rounding error. It's not worth worrying about. I feel like those types of stories get blown out of proportion when people feel bad about their own definitely shortcomings or when they want to feel jealous about somebody. They'll bring up stories like that of people who really haven't had it hard. But I've met a lot of people and a lot of successful people and that type that we're describing that literally had everything handed to them and then were picked for everything and they look, they're tens also

Speaker 3 (00:33:18):

And

Speaker 1 (00:33:19):

They're fucking smart as shit, all that. And they're great at sports too, and music, anything. These people are out there, but there's really not that many of them.

Speaker 2 (00:33:30):

And to your point, it's, it's too easy to be upset by an advantage or anything, but honestly, I'm just stoked

Speaker 3 (00:33:42):

For

Speaker 2 (00:33:42):

Those people. I would've had a way easier time if I was more talented, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, shit was hard for me, but it's because I didn't know what I was doing when I got out here. If I was capable of mixing major label records when I got out here, I don't think I would've slept on a couch for that long. But there are some people who musically or production wise, they just have the gift. And then for the rest of us, there's hard work. And so I always really enjoy getting to work with people from a variety of walks of life, especially if they came from a situation where they've just been dope the entire time. There's plenty you can learn from him.

Speaker 1 (00:34:32):

Do you know Sini?

Speaker 2 (00:34:34):

I've met him. He's the nicest dude ever.

Speaker 1 (00:34:37):

Okay. So I would say that he's a person who has the quote unquote gift.

Speaker 2 (00:34:42):

I've heard that from everyone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:34:44):

Yeah. I think you could safely say that that kid is gifted and there's something very special about him, and it's always been that way. I've known him since he was 17 or something, and he was already a race car while everybody else was driving a consumer grade sports car or something. He was always like that. But his work ethic is insane. That's the other thing. It's not just that he's talented as shit and great skills wise, his capacity to do work is also ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:35:29):

It is. And I mean, you can't have that caliber and amount of output that he has without being that way either. And I don't really, for real know anyone who puts out more high level music than he works on him and Drew folk because they tag team a whole lot of stuff together. I mean, they are putting up numbers consistently just because they are. I mean, they're animals when it comes

Speaker 3 (00:36:00):

To

Speaker 2 (00:36:00):

Work. And I consider myself, I hold my own in terms of 90 hour weeks and all that stuff. I have chilled out a little bit in the last year or so. I started taking Sundays off.

Speaker 1 (00:36:13):

Oh man.

Speaker 2 (00:36:14):

Admittedly lazy. My work has gotten so much better, I feel like.

Speaker 1 (00:36:18):

No, that's good. No, that's actually a really good thing.

Speaker 2 (00:36:20):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:36:24):

I feel like that should be a point of pride almost. It

Speaker 2 (00:36:28):

Is actually.

Speaker 1 (00:36:29):

You graduated to where you can take a day off.

Speaker 2 (00:36:32):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36:33):

That's amazing, dude. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (00:36:35):

Thank you. And even over and above Sunday is if I ever feel like I'm burnt out or man editing is making my body feel bad right now, I am mostly on my own schedule to the point where I can just take a random Wednesday off and sometimes even without taking the time off, the knowledge that I can allows me to work a lot more effectively because it's not just like the stress leaves my shoulders and I'm like, oh, no one's coming to yell at me. My deadlines are still consistently being hit all the time, and I'm working with some incredible people doing some really cool things, so it just ain't that bad.

Speaker 1 (00:37:24):

No. One thing. There are a few things I still want to talk with you about.

Speaker 3 (00:37:29):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:37:30):

So I just want to state them. I want to talk to you about Lincoln Park. I want to talk to you about Colin and some of the high level stuff you've done. But first, something I'm curious about is coming up through URM and really working hard to, you made very deliberate choices to land where you're at now. Nothing's random about it. You went to classes for this stuff, both the audio side, but also to learn the career side of it. You took risks, you put yourself out there in situations where you could easily fail. You moved across the country, moved again across the country you are doing and have done all the stuff that you got to do to make it work. And now that you're, I don't want to say on the other side because there's nothing but work left to do, but you're on the other side in that you got over the humps, you have a career now and it's a sick career. Is the reality of it what you were expecting is this what you were back in those days where you came to the URM summit and those years where we knew you back then as a URM student? Is this what you thought it would be like on the other side?

Speaker 2 (00:38:57):

Truthfully, I never thought I would come out to California for any reason. To be honest. The version of success that I had for myself during that time period was I thought I was going to be a Florida dude working on Florida death metal. And that's a potential viable career path. There's still people who are doing that out there and have good lives in their own studios and

Speaker 1 (00:39:26):

Ruan.

Speaker 2 (00:39:27):

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, my first album that I worked on with my brother, we brought it over to Monte Studios because we loved the Cann Corps albums that Rutan was doing. And that's exactly what I wanted to be from a very young age, is seeing myself in those kinds of situations with those kinds of bands. It materialized in a very different way, going to the summits and then doing a podcast or two with you and then getting the call that represented the complete fork in my entire life. And what's crazy is when you called me, I knew that like, oh shit. If I do what I know I'm supposed to do, then the rest of my life will just be radical.

(00:40:22):

It is not going to be easy. I'm going to have to eat shit for a long time. But when that fork in the road presented itself to me, I did kind of understand that if you put in the work, the life that I have now is available to me in many ways. I know that things can get way crazier. I have the potential to work on the records that define my career. Could be five years from now, it could be 10 years from now. But for the most part, I already feel incredibly successful because I spend most every waking hour of every day working on things that are fulfilling to me with people that I really enjoy, who are just immensely talented. And I get to work out of the Steakhouse Studio in North Hollywood, which is just, it's just a gem as a massive badass, EMI Neve console, every part of that part of the vision has come true. The place that I slept on the couch upstairs, I am now the head engineer of that feels wild.

(00:41:44):

The fact that I've gotten to work with bands like Papa Roach, the first rock record I ever owned was Papa Roach, and now we're about to go back into the studio with them again for another record. There's so many full circle, weird, universal significance things that just continue to happen. And yeah, honestly, I wouldn't trade anything for how things are going currently. I wouldn't have traded anything for what it took to get here either. I mean, there were periods where lack of sleep, no concept of nutrition, my sense of self-preservation was not even secondary or tertiary. It was pretty far down there as I was putting myself through the ringer to work on records with Colin. But it was all radical the entire time. And the relationships that I've gotten to build as a result of going through those experiences, I wouldn't trade for anything. It really is a dream come true, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (00:42:59):

So what you saw yourself doing is a different version of this where it was the death metal version of this in Florida, pretty much

Speaker 2 (00:43:09):

Correct.

Speaker 1 (00:43:10):

Kind of to some degree. So this isn't exactly the way you envisioned it, but I guess the pressure, the pressure and the professionalism and the stuff that comes up, is that what you were expecting, the lifestyle, what you were, I guess? Is any of the reality of it what you were expecting it to be?

Speaker 2 (00:43:34):

It's a lot crazier, to be honest. Not even just the things that I get to work on and the scale of it. But I've been out here for five years and change, and I just went on my first European vacation in February and March of this year with my partner and I got to go to Switzerland to snowboard in the Alps and the music that I work on paid for that.

Speaker 1 (00:44:01):

That's sick.

Speaker 2 (00:44:02):

Yeah, it's sick as fuck, dude. I definitely feel like that was never in my wildest dreams. The Florida version, I think was a much more modest appraisal of my potential that it was scaled down to the things that I had access. I didn't know that any of this stuff was possible. I'd never seen it before. I never knew anyone who told me that I could do it. Basically, the knowledge that I had to go off of even prior to URM was just scrolling through the sneak forum and being like, oh shit. You could be one of those dudes.

Speaker 4 (00:44:42):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:44:43):

And that's the best we had, man. And honestly, even that was enough of a carrot on a stick for most of the people who are successful in Modern Metal to get there.

Speaker 1 (00:44:56):

All there was,

Speaker 2 (00:44:58):

And honestly, there's pride in the community of us who came from forum days and stuff like that because of how ridiculous it seems. The fact that we are still using Metro Klo channel strip because Andy Snip does is pretty sweet.

Speaker 1 (00:45:18):

It is kind of amazing, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:45:20):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:45:21):

We just went on and on about it with Rick on the podcast the other day. Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:45:25):

Don't get me started, dude. Shout out Rick Carson. Man. Smartest Human. And in truth, I was brought out here to work with Colin, but when I had my internship with Colin in a day to remember, I was really Rick's intern in a lot of meaningful ways. I spent more time around him and he showed me the ropes and he stayed one of my closest and dearest friends through all this. I know I can call him if I'm working on anything. Hey man, I need to know what Kick drum I should use for something that's supposed to sound like this 60 soul record. And he just knows. He knows exactly what to tell me to do and all of that stuff. And man, they make good plugins now. It feels very cool getting to use the plugins that my homie and the geniuses that Metro Halo make together. And the fact that he made me a plugin just as a favor is,

Speaker 1 (00:46:24):

What's the story with that?

Speaker 2 (00:46:26):

Colin had scooped up the Metro KLO interfaces, which are absolutely incredible, and they have some DSP stuff in 'em. So we had a setting on one of the DSP plugins that we used as a kind limiting stage to follow Collin's analog hardware to bus and

Speaker 1 (00:46:50):

Oh, these look good.

Speaker 2 (00:46:53):

I mean, I'm biased, but they're the best. They're absolute incredible sounding, and the thing that I appreciate so much about them is if you have one of these chassis from 15 years ago, you just buy a new card to stick in the same chassis and it's up to date with their new shit. Nice. So I know that if I continue to use their gear 20 years from now, Metro Taylor Channel Strip is still going to work and so are the interfaces, whereas rest in peace to anyone on an AVID system.

Speaker 1 (00:47:29):

So keep going about the plugin.

Speaker 2 (00:47:31):

Yeah. So he found out that I became very attached to the setting that I had developed to limit on the other end of the hardware. And he goes, send me your setting. I said, okay. I didn't think much of it. And I sent it to him and then a few months go by and then he sends me an email. He goes, yo, install this. I said, okay, pop open the gooey and it says Kevin's limiter. I said, no way. So what he did for me is he made me a VST version of the thing that was in the hardware so that I could take it with me at whatever studio I was at or travel with it.

Speaker 1 (00:48:15):

That's really cool.

Speaker 2 (00:48:17):

And to my knowledge, it's the only plugin that was ever made as a favor for a friend like that. And I dunno, it's cheeky. It has no settings. It's just my setting. But people love

Speaker 1 (00:48:26):

It. It is what it is. It is what it needs to be.

Speaker 2 (00:48:29):

And I went to Nam and I put Kevin's limiter on my name tag to be cheeky, and it's actually insane to me that high level mixers and mastering professionals who I really look up to would come up to me and be like, yo, your limiter sick. I was like totally taken aback. It'll be like people who worked on Raining Blood by Slayer. It was like, yo, I use Kevin's limiter all the time. I'm like, get the fuck out of here, dude.

Speaker 1 (00:49:03):

I'm looking at it right now. So it's not on the metric Halo site. It's on the Make Believe studios.com. Yeah. Yeah, Kevin's limiter. I love the look.

Speaker 2 (00:49:18):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:49:19):

Fucking awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:49:20):

Yeah, the font is kind of like a meme, and in many ways it is. It just does one thing and if you like it, you can keep it on if you don't, and just take it off. That's it. Those are the two possible options with that plugin.

Speaker 1 (00:49:37):

That's wild. So you probably never expected that to happen? No, not

Speaker 2 (00:49:42):

In a million years.

Speaker 1 (00:49:42):

Yeah. I'm going to try it. He sent me the plugins the other day after we did the episode. I haven't had a chance to check him out, but now I'm especially interested in checking out your limiter.

Speaker 2 (00:49:55):

Yeah, I use the whole suite obsessively on everything. In particular, MBEQ and MBSI, the EQ and MCI channel strip respectively are like 90% of everything that I do on a mix these days.

Speaker 1 (00:50:12):

I need to spend some time with these plugins. They look really, really cool. I like the simplicity a lot. Yes. Yeah, I think simplicity in the modern world is currency because just life's so complicated. Everything's so complicated. I like things that just do the thing they're supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (00:50:35):

Yeah, I agree. Having one channel strip that I use for everything has deeply decluttered my life, not having to think about what I'm using. Obviously if I can't get something to work, I'll rack my brain over some obscure thing in my plugin folder that can do something. That sounds silly, but for the most part, consistent tools that I think sound great have made me a better mixer because I mean, let's be honest, Seban uses channel Strip. That's the one that he uses. And not to say that he's not using anything else, but it ain't the plugin.

Speaker 1 (00:51:24):

No.

(00:51:27):

When we first put out speed mixing, a lot of people loved it, but there were some haters, and I think that what the haters and detractors didn't understand is that we weren't saying cut corners. It was more about trying to get to a point you're talking about now where it's not that you use the same thing a hundred percent of the time, but you will probably use the same thing 85% of the time. And there's certain things that you will do exactly the same way each time or almost each time. You'll do the same things enough of the time to where it's worth systematizing to some degree. That's kind of the moral of the story with it. And we're kind of in the middle of the launch as speed mixing too, so it's kind of top of mind, but hearing you say, yeah, that you use that channel strip on every single time because you love working with it, but also it frees up your brain ram, I think.

Speaker 2 (00:52:29):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:52:29):

Right.

Speaker 2 (00:52:31):

The other thing that's cool is I can actually show this. I picked up channel strip mid controller, and I just mapped it to Metro Channel Stream, and I've been having so much fun because I know that I can just on a hotkey, just add that plugin to anything and then just rip around. I'm on a one channel console at any given moment. It is loads of fun to do that, and it has made me better too, to take the visual aspect out of what I'm doing, knowing full well that the plugin sounds really good.

Speaker 1 (00:53:15):

And it sounds like it's very efficient too.

Speaker 2 (00:53:18):

Yeah. I think anything that makes mixing more fun makes it more efficient because getting upset and queuing your snare five or six times or listening to guitars and solo and hunting after resident frequencies and stuff, that's not very fun. What is fun to me is going through a few tracks at a time and then doing broad sculpting using my hands and using that kind of workflow. I feel like I'm falling down a slippery slope, and I'm going to end up a console dude like Joel in no time, but

Speaker 1 (00:53:54):

Who's to say such is life? So Colin joined Lincoln Park. He sure did. And obviously you knew about that long in advance. I mean, I'm sure that he had it going on long before he told us about it, and he told us long, well, not long, but well before his most recent nail the mix, which was in March, I think. Yeah. I mean, I know it wasn't out of nowhere, but those things usually build into something, right?

Speaker 2 (00:54:28):

Yeah. The way I think about it is, Colin got to find out this year that he was training his entire life to do this, but I think it was two, maybe even closer to three years ago, we had a few sessions with Mike Otta where he was coming in to co-produce or just be there writing for other artists. I remember the first day that we had a session together, the chemistry was impressive, just right out the gate. And Colin sat down and started doing the thing that he always does, which is steamroll a song into existence on every instrument, and he's just flying around. He's laying the bass and stuff like that. And then he goes in to play the drums, which is his primary instrument, and Mike is sitting next to me at the console. I'm going through takes and stuff like that. I got this sense that I could see wheels turning in his head, and he turned to me and he goes, is he like this?

(00:55:23):

I was like, yeah, on every instrument. And he goes, and he just kind of sat there and marinated in that moment for a minute, and then that session led to more sessions. They started collaborating more and more, and then next thing I know, Colin is going over to Mike's house in his personal studio to start working on various projects, and then it just happened organically. I did not work on the Lincoln Park album myself, but was just there working with Colin, so I got to be mixing on his rig in one room while he and Emily are rehearsing in the live room next to me.

Speaker 1 (00:56:06):

And you got to see the inception of the relationship.

Speaker 2 (00:56:09):

Yeah. It really is that cool that getting to see someone at Mike's level figure out that he has found somebody that he's so creatively comfortable with, that he wants to be in a band with that person. That's a really unique and crazy thing, not just that, oh, they got new people as fill-ins. No, Emily and Colin are members of that band, and they're a unit and they made the album rips. It's so good. And yeah, I'm just really excited. I got to see their show at the LA Forum. It's sold out in three minutes or less, and then there was a waiting list of over 40,000 people. That's crazy. Getting to see, I mean, I've spent more time with Colin over the last five years than anyone else in my life, and getting to see that dude walk out on stage to 20,000 people cheering and seeing his face plastered on the side of the forum, that's as cool as it gets, man. It's

Speaker 1 (00:57:14):

Pretty wild.

Speaker 2 (00:57:15):

It really is. I tear up a little thinking about it because he won, man. He got it. Everything that he's worked so hard for and all the work that we've done together has beared, the gnarliest fruit imaginable. Seriously,

Speaker 1 (00:57:29):

But it's also not surprising. That's the thing.

Speaker 2 (00:57:32):

Not even slightly. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:57:33):

Right. Very. I had heard about it, but I didn't know exactly what it was, and then once I found out what was happening, it was like, oh yeah, of course. I guess if you don't know Colin, then you might question it. But I think anyone that knows him and has been around him knows what level of talent he brings and skill he brings to the table and just how he is as a human. It's a very obvious like, oh yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 2 (00:58:10):

And if you're confused at all, just go see him on acoustic guitar for a few songs. He does background vocals on others. He's being used to his full potential in that project, and it's very, very cool.

Speaker 1 (00:58:24):

Have you seen Dan Lancaster play with Muse?

Speaker 2 (00:58:26):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:58:28):

It's kind of like that they're utilizing the full range of his abilities.

Speaker 2 (00:58:33):

Yeah. You see him up there, you're like, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:58:36):

Yep. Yeah, that rules. Yeah. They're not just picking anybody for those roles. Certainly not. I'm wondering, first of all, how wild is that shit? But are you already, I guess, what's the word? Are you already weathered to working with mega artists? Does it no longer phase you at all, or is there something different about it?

Speaker 2 (00:59:09):

What's funny about that is that it just depends who it is. I had a vocal tracking session with Colin and the Jonas Brothers a few months ago. That's water off a Duck's back. If you were going to put me in a room with Alex Webster and Cannibal Corps, I'd probably freak out a little bit. So the people that I'm likely to be starstruck by are way smaller than the people that I typically work with, but that's just a personal affinity kind of thing. In many ways. I feel like I could stay very calm in most high level situations just because I don't know, they showed up to work, so I'm just doing my part.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):

It's just work.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):

I could press three for Mike Otta the same way that I can press three for anyone. It's like, obviously you got to bring your A game. You got to rise to the occasion. But yeah, fundamentally it's not that different. And in many ways it's less stressful because they're so good.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):

Yes, that's exactly right. So my experience of whenever I've done something high level is that I enjoy it the most. I enjoy it the most, mostly because the person you're working with is so damn good that it's a pleasure to be there working with them. They're the reason that working with people like that, it's like, oh yeah, that's the reason I do this. Why can't it always be like, this is how I usually end up feeling. And so people have asked me, does X situation make you nervous? And it's like, if it did upfront, maybe. But once you are in the room, everyone's just doing work,

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):

Especially, that's

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):

All it is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):

In those highest level situations, no one person is expected to do everything, and typically whoever is in their respective role is the best that they can be whenever I get to sit down and the only thing I have to do is engineer for some obscenely talented producers working with obscenely talented artists. I agree that is the most fun that I can have doing my job because it comes together so quickly. Some of these songs, like The Instrumental will come together in less than a half hour, and then the songwriter will come in and do a top line in the next 15 minutes. And it's not just that the song is good, it's so good that you're going to hear it in Target in those situations. Nobody is stressed about anything because they, you're,

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):

You're just doing what they do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):

If they hand the base to this dude, he's just going to murder it. So yeah, we're just going to keep it rolling. The vibes are very high, typically in those situations. And not to say that there aren't moments that can be stressful in times of creative uncertainty or vocalists can get in their head for one reason or another, but all of those are manageable situations, and they're not unique to high level artists either. In fact, they're a lot worse in low level artists most of the time because the feelings of insecurity are inseparably linked to talent level, or they're not

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):

Strangely enough, or they're not, and then that's a bigger problem. Maybe they should be, yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):

I got to let 'em down. Easy on the talk back. Yeah, we got to do that one again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):

Yeah, it's the thing too, I've noticed is at higher levels, shit still goes wrong. Absolutely. But people are pretty chill about it. I've never experienced involved with, when I've been around higher level work, whatever it is, and there's something breaks like the gear breaks and there's a delay or whatever. I've never experienced someone freaking out. I've only seen that at the lower levels just because I think also at the higher levels, people, they just, maybe they've been doing it for so long, they've seen it all, and everybody knows sometimes computers take a shit. It's not the end of the world, but I think at lower levels where there's nerves and insecurities and the computer takes a shit, it's like, oh, no. Am I going to get fired over this? Is my life over? Are they going to think that I am my computer? Or some weird psychological stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):

I mean, even further than that, this one time I was working with Colin at Five Seconds a summer, and Ashton, the drummer of Five Sauce, amazing player, really, really gifted. And he was in the live room cutting drums, and we were moving so quickly and we had just done something else using those overhead channels where I had a piece of gear patched in. It was like gnarly distortion, like overhead ruining distortion, and we were moving so fast, and I had 'em solo low in the mix that I, for whatever reason, couldn't tell what was going on. And then half hour goes by, we're working on those tracks, I solo and I go, oh, no. Well, this is the end. But I just turned around, Hey guys, I made a mistake. We need to recut this entire song of drums. And he was just cool about it. He was like, oh, cool. No problem. Yeah, I thought I could nail that fell better anyway. Yeah, easy. That's not the case with everyone. Some people would be justifiably really upset about that, but we laughed it off, moved on with a song, and it came out great, and it was on the album,

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):

Especially if it was a pattern, right? If that was happening all the time, that that's one thing. But I think, yeah, there's some hotheads, but I think overall, the way you handled it too is a big part of it, of just communicating clearly, taking blame and just being clear and upfront about it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):

Especially, you're very much allowed to make a mistake in the context of crushing the entire rest of the day. Especially, I mean, show me one vocalist who does everything in one take. There's a few baby, but everything, I dunno, dude, I just listened to you. Fuck up that phrase 20 times in a row. Just cut me some slack in the opposite direction. But yeah, people, they're far kinder. If the general goings on are smooth it, it's music. Nobody's going to die. The worst thing that we can do is work on a bad song,

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):

Which sucks, but

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):

Yeah, but get

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):

It done, then you'll work on a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):

Then you show up tomorrow and you do it again, and it just won't suck as bad, maybe, hopefully.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):

Yeah. I think too, the communication thing is crucial. I've experienced a lot of engineers who can't communicate, and I think that that ended up being their unraveling band members too, but just letting people know that there's a problem. It's your fault. This is what we have to do. I've seen scenarios where something like that happens and the engineer is petrified to one, take the blame, and two, tell the artists we're going to need to redo something and then we'll not say it, and then end up with those fucked up tracks in there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):

Yeah. I've seen that happen. Now that's not good. That's way worse. Way, way, way worse.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):

Yeah. Yeah. Because mostly if you admit a mistake that you made in the moment, everyone in the room understands that you're on the same team, that, Hey, I am speaking up because I want what's best for the record. If that means you need somebody else to be in this chair recording your song, that's fine, but I'll see myself out. But for the most part, this is not up to my standards, which I believe to be the same as your standards. So I don't think anyone really upset when you frame it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):

Mistakes are allowed,

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):

Definitely

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):

Pattern's not, I think that's

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):

The difference. If you make the mistake too early in the day, then things go weird.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):

Yeah. If you're struggling to get a feed to the headphones, they'll lose trust in you real fast. All of the basic stuff can't be fucked up basically, but especially if a mistake is understandable or like, Hey, sorry, we were moving too fast and I deleted this. That's fucking my bad. It's just not that dire. I do. Hip hop sessions are a little different. Some of those are higher stakes. You ever watch that show Atlanta?

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):

No. I lived there, so

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):

I

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):

Didn't need to watch a show about it, but I know what the stakes are on some of those.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):

Those can be life

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):

Or death.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):

There's a scene in that show that runs in my head all the time where they show up to a recording studio so the protagonist can track a feature or something like that, and the artist who's in the booth is like, okay, yeah, lemme cut this first, and they'll come right in. And engineer is just some nervous looking white dude in front of Pro Tools and he hops on the talk back. He goes, I'm sorry, pro Tools crashed. Guy on the mic's. Like, I thought I said we weren't going to do this today. And then they make everyone else leave so that the goons can beat up the engineer. Wow. Yeah. In some ways it used to be more like that than it is if you're an engineer working. The

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):

Old school music industry was abusive. Yes, you're

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):

Right. If you were working for Death Row records, Suge Knight and stuff like that. Yeah. Mistakes are viewed a little bit differently than the rooms that I'm typically in.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):

That's on you if you decided to get wrapped up in that shit though.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):

Yeah, sometimes and risk and reward, those engineers are compensated sometimes fairly for their abuse, and they're not all like that either. But I know plenty of friends,

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):

But we all know people who have had guns in their face.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):

Yeah. Or like dumb shit.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. One of my close friends out here, he has horror stories from being in sessions with people literally being shot in the studio, and I'm very grateful that it could just be the genre that I work in and the circle of people that I'm around, but I never really feel unsafe for any reason doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):

I have heard so many horror stories. The horror stories I hear on this side of the fence are more like crazy people dealing with crazy people,

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):

Dealing

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):

With unprofessional people. You don't really hear too much about

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):

Guns

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):

In people's faces, engineer getting shot over a hard drive, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):

Certainly, and honestly, the state of the music industry right now because of streaming, I Atlantic just laid off a lot of their staff. The labels are kind of scrambling right now, and the market is correcting itself for whatever is going on with how much music is valued or devalued depending on how you want to see it. My general feeling is that the people who are doing it are more serious and more sober than they ever have been.

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):

Because there's not enough budget to do cocaine on the console anymore, so everyone who's in there is drinking green juice and making the best music of their life.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):

And I think tours are like that too for

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):

Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):

In large part,

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):

All of the touring professionals that I have in my life are professionals and the bands, you can't make it if you're binge drinking yourself into oblivion every night, you just won't survive the climate. There's not enough overhead to fuck around that hard,

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):

Thank God.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):

Yeah, right. I mean, I kind of feel that way. Don't get me wrong. That shit probably ruled in the eighties and nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):

You sure it did?

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):

Yeah. If I was doing my same job at the exact same studio in the nineties, I'd be Scrooge mcd ducking into piles of cash from time to time. But there's also consequences to that. I enjoy very much getting to work in rooms with people who are very focused and they're focused on making the art, which to me is the part that's fun. That's the reason why I do it. There are some studio sessions where it's just a party and you get paid the same, but it's not really about that, especially not to me. There's just environments that are more raucous to begin with, but especially in rock music, there's not enough meat on the bone to, the margins are too extreme and you're trying to stay competitive, and if you're messing around getting involved in the wrong things, then you're going to get overtaken very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):

You don't make enough. There's not enough money to put up with that kind of behavior, and so very few people do, and I feel like if I hear about someone being that way, acting like it's the eighties, my thoughts are immediately, they're not going to last, or they must be making a lot of money for somebody to put up with that. A lot of people must be banking off of this person for that to be tolerated, because that's the only way that that shit gets tolerated in 2024 is money. And that's honestly, I think that's the only reason it was tolerated back in the day too.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):

There

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):

Was just so much money that Sure, I'll look the other way and ignore the fact that we do nothing all day and you just get high all day for a million dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):

Yeah, that's an easier pill to swallow certainly.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):

Especially

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):

If the a and r is the one who's bringing the drugs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):

Yeah. I prefer this music industry. I really do.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):

I do too. It suits me better. Of course, some of my favorite records were made during the time period, wherever it was out of their gourd, but

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):

Gza.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):

Yeah. But all that to say, I think it's a positive thing that people are concerned about mental health in music far more than they ever have been also.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):

That's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):

Yeah, it's a deeply good thing. People are just more empathetic in general. I of course wasn't around when the other times, but Lee, the studio owner, has run this place since the eighties and he has decorated stories from all this time periods and how we are not nearly as ext extreme as things used to be.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):

Yeah, and I think that's great. When I hear from people that the music industry sucks or that times were better, my thoughts are you just don't remember or you weren't. There times were not better there. Were only better for very few people who managed to get into a radio rotation or something. But by and large, the music industry now is the best it's ever been because there's the most opportunity to actually have a normal kind of future

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):

From

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):

It. It's not either you become a multi fucking millionaire or you're nothing and there's no InBetween, and if you're a multimillionaire, they might kill you with the amount of drugs you're exposed to. It's just not that industry anymore, thank God. But I think it's a good place to end. I want to thank you very much for being flexible with your schedule, first of all, of course. And taking the time to hang out, and congratulations on everything, man. It's awesome to see how far you've come. It's just so killer.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):

Well, dude, I can't thank you enough for your involvement in that arc for me, you and all the guys at UM, the entire program has always been very, very good to me, and I still poke around If I need to figure something out, I'll look at a fast track or look at, Hey, that's great. What's Buster doing on guitars? I've never worked on anything and drop E before. That knowledge is out there and accessible and it's just a gift. Especially coming from the forum days, like we were talking about

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):

The good old days. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Buster and Drop E, we're about to do something really cool with him, but that's all I'll say. Thanks, man.